Early in the global movement to end domestic violence,
advocates recognized the law and legal enforcement mechanisms
as critical components of the effort to keep women safe and hold
offenders accountable for violent behavior. In the past three
decades, law reform and the changing of the attitudes of legal
professionals has been a major focus of domestic violence advocacy.
From R. Emerson Dobash & Russel P. Dobash, Women, Violence
and Social Change 174-75 (1992).It is important to note
here that the most effective way to implement legal reform is
to do so within the context of a coordinated
community response. That is, legal professionals should communicate
and cooperate with each other and other members of the community
including medical professionals, housing agencies, social service
agencies and domestic violence advocates. This has proven to be
the most effective way to promote victim safety and offender accountability.

Criminal
Law

Virtually all countries in the CEE/CIS criminalize assault.
However, consistent with other regions in the world, few legal
systems expressly recognize domestic violence as criminal conduct.
When used, existing criminal and administrative laws that prohibit
intentional injury often result in negative consequences for victims
of domestic violence. For example, women frequently seek to withdraw
their complaints or ask for leniency when they learn that their
abuser may be punished by a monetary fine or imprisoned and unable
to support the family.

In addition to the failure of the state
to assist in prosecution, the courts often fail to assess proper
penalties. Legal professionals in countries around the region
have expressed reluctance to “harm” family relations by sentencing
a batterer to serve jail time. Often, men receive only a suspended
sentence or a fine after a conviction for domestic assault. In
the case of a fine, women are generally responsible for ensuring
that the fine is paid because of their relationships to the perpetrators.
From MAHR, Domestic
Violence in Armenia 3 (2000); MAHR, Domestic
Violence in Uzbekistan 25 (2000).

In the past thirty years, advocates around the world have
had many successes in their efforts to change both criminal
justice
laws to better protect victims and hold offenders accountable.
Additional discussion of laws related to domestic violence
is
provided below and at the Law and
Policy section
of this website.

Police

Throughout the CEE/CIS region, police are often the first
members of the law enforcement system who victims of domestic
violence encounter. Many police in the region, however, receive
little or no training on how work with such victims. As a result,
police frequently do not respond to cases of domestic violence,
rarely remove abusers from the home and typically try to discourage
and dissuade women from making formal complaints. Many of the
reports on domestic
violence in CEE/CIS produced by Minnesota Advocates for Human
Rights, as well as the International Helsinki Federation for Human
Rights’s report, Women
2000: An Investigation into the Status of Women’s Rights in Central
and South-Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States
(2000), discuss police response to domestic violence. In part
due to societal attitudes about domestic violence and in part
related to budgetary constraints, police officers often treat
domestic violence cases as “unimportant,” not worthy of police
attention, and best resolved within the family. Police inefficiency
and apathy also contributes to women’s inability to prosecute
their cases on their own. Police may refuse to cooperate when
asked to give testimony in court.

These problems with police are not unique to the CEE/CIS
region. Tracing and comparing the progress of the battered women’s
movement in Britain and the United States, Dobash and Dobash identified
the attitude and conduct of police as one of the most difficult
hurdles to overcome. From R. Emerson Dobash & Russel
P. Dobash, Women, Violence and Social Change 121 (1992).

In many countries in CEE/CIS, people who provide services
to battered women identify police and military officers as perpetrators
of violence. Women in Macedonia reported that they do not call
the police because they fear experiencing harassment or brutality
from them. From MAHR, Domestic
Violence in Macedonia 17 (1998). Many pointed out that when
perpetrators have a connection to the police, the police are even
less likely to respond to a call for intervention. Sources in
the region also identify corruption, lack of funding for police
and society’s general mistrust of police as factors in police
inability to effectively protect victims of domestic violence.

Globally, there have been many reform
efforts targeted at the law enforcement response to domestic
violence. The goals of any reform effort aimed at police response
should be increased victim safety and offender accountability.
It should be noted that the success of any strategy is highly
dependent on a variety of social dynamics unique to each country.
As mentioned above, it is very important that strategies for improving
the police response to domestic violence be implemented within
the context of a coordinated community
response.

Forensic Medical
System

Domestic violence victims seeking access to court systems
worldwide are finding that one of the most difficult hurdles to
overcome lies in a procedural or evidentiary requirement common
to many legal systems—the medical legal certificate issued by
government institutes of forensic medicine. In many countries,
battered women are required to obtain this certificate documenting
their injuries before they can proceed in court.

In the CEE/CIS region, access to court systems either requires
or heavily depends on formal forensic medical certificates to
prove domestic violence. Generally, according to this system,
forensic doctors examine a woman and document her injuries with
a certificate. The certificate indicates the seriousness of the
injury and the category of assault violated by the injury. From
Cheryl Thomas, Domestic Violence, in 1 Women and International
Human Rights Law 219, 225 (Kelly D. Askin & Dorean M. Koenig
eds., 1999).

Research reveals many problems with the forensic medical
system as it currently exists. The categories of assault do not
always provide an accurate description of the level of injury.
For example, forensic reports do not consider the impact of repeated
injuries over a period of time, the appropriate measure of psychological
injury, or the possibility that the severity of the injury may
not be fully recognizable at the time of the examination. In addition,
few forensic doctors receive any training on how work with domestic
violence victims. Some go beyond documenting the injury and inquire
into the circumstances of the injury. The doctors will use their
personal notion of fairness and take into account mitigating circumstances
when filling out the certificates. In some cases, forensic doctors
may determine that a woman provoked an attack and grade her injuries
at a lower level. As a result, the case is essentially adjudicated
by medical rather than legal professionals and a woman may be
precluded from state prosecution of her claim.

For example, in a case in Romania, a forensic certificate graded
the injuries at a level requiring fourteen days to heal, despite
the fact that the injuries the woman sustained included a broken
leg. When asked about the file, the judge explained that the doctor’s
evaluation “may be affected by what he or she views as mitigating
circumstances, such as the victim’s state of intoxication, whether
the doctor feels the abuse was provoked, self-defense, etc.” The
consequence of grading the injury at a lower level in this case
was that the woman was left to prosecute her case on her own without
the assistance of the state. From MAHR, Lifting
the Last Curtain: A Report on Domestic Violence in Romania
12 n.41 (1995). In some countries such as Moldova, Ukraine and
Macedonia, the certificates can cost women the equivalent of a
month’s salary.

In Poland, several forensic doctors expressed extreme skepticism
of women victims of violence. They said that they viewed their
first responsibility as determining whether the injuries could
have been caused in the manner the victim described. They expressed
the opinion that a woman would lie to achieve an advantage in
a court case. Although none of the doctors interviewed in Poland
identified cases in which women lied, they universally expressed
mistrust of women. From MAHR, Domestic
Violence in Poland 36 (2002).

Prosecution

Consistent with the situation in many parts of the world,
women in the CEE/CIS region encounter obstacles when they attempt
to pursue prosecution of domestic assaults. In spite of strongly
worded laws prohibiting assault in some countries, prosecutors
are often reluctant to enforce these laws in domestic violence
cases. Prosecutors may also believe the same myths
and stereotypes that absolve the perpetrator
of personal responsibility for his actions

Prosecutorial failure to pursue domestic violence offenses
many be grounded in the language of the law. For example, Article
161 of the Bulgarian Criminal Code distinguishes between an assaults
by strangers and by relatives in the case of medium-level injuries.
From MAHR, Domestic
Violence in Bulgaria 6 (1996). Those injured by a relative
are not entitled to involvement by the state prosecutor’s office.
They may prosecute their cases but must do so alone; they must
locate and call their own witnesses and present their own evidence
in court. Advocates in Bulgaria have undertake efforts to change
these laws.

The opinion among prosecutors that domestic violence victims
have no place seeking criminal sanctions against their batterers
prevails in many parts of the CEE/CIS region. In Albania, for
example, where procedure dictates that a woman bring her case
to the prosecutor if she seeks criminal sanctions, it is standard
policy for the prosecutor to try to convince her to drop the case.
From MAHR, Domestic
Violence in Albania 16 (1996). In Poland, though the law allows
for a prosecutor to proceed without the participation of the victim,
one battered woman reported that the prosecutor’s response to
her request for assistance was: “Unless they took you out in a
plastic bag, the public prosecutors’ office would not be interested.”
From Cheryl Thomas, Domestic Violence, in 1 Women and International
Human Rights Law 219, 228, 254 (Kelly D. Askin & Dorean M.
Koenig eds., 1999).

Globally, there have been many efforts aimed at improving
prosecutors’ response to
domestic violence. One such initiative is the promotion of policies
that
allow prosecutors to press charges against defendants without
the consent or even involvement of the victim. Within any strategy,
the three goals of prosecution should be: (1) to protect the
victim,
(2) to deter the defendant from further violent acts by holding
him accountable for his actions, and (3) to communicate to the
community that domestic violence will not be tolerated. Training
for prosecutors on these issues
is an important part of an effective intervention strategy.

Judicial
Responses

Like prosecutors and
police officers, judges
play important roles in the legal system’s response to domestic
violence. Because they are generally the final authority in civil
and criminal matters involving domestic abuse, judges hold substantial
power to sanction batterers, protect battered women, and to send
messages to the community, the victim, and the batterer alike
that domestic violence will not be tolerated.

Although prosecutors in countries in CEE/CIS often have
considerable control over the initiation and course of criminal
proceedings, to the extent judges are able to make choices regarding
sentencing or other aspects of the criminal trial, these choices
may be influenced by myths about domestic violence. If, for example,
judges believe that alcoholism
causes domestic violence, for example, they may only require batterers
to attend alcohol treatment programs. Judges may not understand
that battered women are most vulnerable when they attempt to leave
a relationship and therefore may fail to take steps to ensure
that women are protected inside and outside of the courtroom.

Judicial responses to domestic violence can, however, further
victim safety and batterer accountability in many ways. In the
courtroom, judges are enforcers and interpreters of existing laws;
they may also have the ability to establish courtroom policies
and procedures that promote victim safety and are respectful of
all parties. Outside of the courtroom, judges are often community
leaders, and can play vital roles in the effort to eliminate domestic
violence.

Advocates can work to improve judicial responses to domestic
violence in a number of ways. Court
monitoring, for example, helps to systematically identify
needed improvement in judicial responses and also increase the
visibility of these issues; the presence of monitors in courtrooms
can itself cause judges to improve their handling of domestic
violence cases. Trainings for
judges can provide judges with the information they need
to better address the needs of battered women and ensure batterer
accountability. Finally, dedicated
courts and court processes can also help ensure batterer accountability
and victim protection by streamlining navigation of the court
system, increasing victims’ access to resources, and ensuring
a greater expertise of the judges and other personnel addressing
these issues.